We interviewed Sherry Decker in September, 2014. She has just signed a contract for her novel Hypershot. R&R: Congratulations on your Hypershot deal. Decker: Thank you. I’m very happy about this. It happened the way I always assumed it would, by total surprise. R&R: When did you start writing Hypershot? Decker: In the late eighties, about three months before I met you at Louisa’s, (Tio’s Bakery back then wasn’t it)? I wanted to apply to your fiction writing class at the U.W. and that required sending you a minimum number of pages. I had just written the first thirty pages of Hypershot, so that’s what I submitted. Thinking back to that early manuscript, I’m amazed you accepted me into your class. R&R: When did you finish? Decker: The first time? It’s been rewritten and revised so many times that question is difficult to answer. I thought it was done when I sent it to Richard Curtis, my agent in New York. Especially after he read it and liked it, and decided to represent me. That was August 15, 2011. R&R: We like to cluster questions. So here are a few: What genre is Hypershot? Is it science fiction? Urban fantasy? Dystopian? Decker: I like what Ray Bradbury said about his Martian Chronicles: “I don’t write science fiction,” he said. “Science fiction is a depiction of the real. Fantasy is a depiction of the unreal....

Remick and Ray Interviewed Zack Hoffman between May 1 and June 15th, 2014 R&R—Thanks for agreeing to sit down with us for this interview, Zack. Let’s get right to it—you’ve been onstage, in film, and on TV. How did you get started acting? ZH: I’ve always wanted to be anyone but me and I thought acting was going to give me that opportunity. Of course I was wrong. At first it was an attempt to get attention and then after years it became a craft. I took some classes in High School and then in College but it never really clicked for me. I found my way to the Speech department in college, then radio and then back to acting after I left school. One night friends took me to see “The Committee” at the Tiffany theatre on Sunset Blvd in Hollywood. It was the first improv troupe I had ever seen. I fell in love with acting style and within a year I was taking classes and performing with Kent Skov and the LA Connection. R&R—Of all your roles which one strikes closest to home? ZH: There has to be part of you in every character you play. If I really have to choose I would have to say it’s the one I wrote. That would be lounge singer Nick Sands in “Tuxedo Man”. I get to take...

We interviewed Janet Yoder in March & April 2014 R&R: You write in three forms: essays, creative non-fiction, and short stories. What is the difference between “essay” and “creative non-fiction?” Is a short story different from “creative non-fiction?” JY: To me, essays and creative nonfiction are essentially the same. Some publications use one term and some the other. I divide my essays into two categories: 1) personal essays inspired by my 30-year friendship with Skagit tribal teacher Vi Hilbert and 2) all other essays. My short stories are definitely fiction. I wrote a novel set in Indian Country but tucked it away in a drawer and I sometimes work on a new novel set in eastern Washington in between work on essays and short fiction. R&R: What are the techniques of fiction that you use in essay and creative nonfiction—if any? JY: I try to develop any real person I write about as I would a fictional character, trying to understand what makes that person tick. Lately I am concentrating on the idea of place in both essay and fiction. Looking at geology, mythology, plants, animals, weather, and the cultures of a place. R&R: When do you decide on the form? Do you start writing and watch the words morph into something? Or do you know the form before you start writing? JY: I wish I decided on...